Foreign, mainland spouses of locals to be called 'new residents': NIA director

The China Post news staff--Foreign and mainland Chinese spouses of local citizens and those who are naturalized as the nationals of the Republic of China will be called “new residents” from now on, Hsieh Lo-kung, director of the National Immigration Agency (NIA) under the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday.

Hsieh made the remarks when speaking at seminars held by the NIA in Qijin and Fongshan District of Kaohsiung City, southern Taiwan with representatives of new immigrants yesterday morning.

During the seminars, Hsieh elaborated on the government's efforts on taking care of new immigrants and expressed the hopes for all new residents to jointly contribute to Taiwan's economic and social developments and create a harmonious homeland on the island.

Hsieh continued that the NIA will hear different voices and suggestions from various walks of life concerning how to better take care of new residents. At the moment, all local township offices can apply to the government for funds for financial learning courses for foreign spouses to help sharpen their ability to make a living.

The Ministry of the Interior, Hsieh noted, will enforce a nationwide new-residents torch plan to grant special support to those schools with a higher ratio of children of new residents, so as to effectively help such children smoothly receive education.

In addition, the ministry will also dispatch staffers to visit homes of new residents, cultivate pluralistic teaching staff, and arrange mother-language learning courses.

He stressed that the NIA has set aside budgets annually to sponsor courses designed to help new residents adapt to local society, in addition to making regular visits to various communities to extend services to new residents.

Just a shame all this information is in Chinese and kept a secret. So if we're new residents now, what were we called before? 'Foreigner with ID card'? Only in these inward looking society's do you have a difference between a born citizen and a naturalized citizen. Citizenship should be just that. There is a difference between getting the right to abode (APRC) and citizenship (ID card) so why not just call everyone residents, with the same rights and names?